Pizza is one of the most popular dishes around the world. It is generally a flat round bread which is oven-baked and covered with tomatoes or a tomato-based sauce and mozzarella cheese. Toppings are also added depending on the region, culture or personal preference. In this article, we will be learning how to make a pizza at home.

The basic steps in pizza making are first preparing dough, then pizza sauce. After that, cheese and toppings are added according to taste and then the pizza is baked in an oven. This seems to be simple while reading but preparing a good mouth watering pizza at home drains in a lot of hard work. However, you will be able to make pizza at home easily using this step-by-step guide.

Let’s start from the scratch.

Making Pizza Dough

Dough making has been known to humans since ages now, but mastering the art to make perfect pizza dough can be a bit cumbersome sometimes. At home, Pizza dough is prepared by hands, no special machinery is required. However to prepare hand-made dough you will need to have a large mixing bowl, a measuring cup, measuring spoons, a large whisk or wooden mixing spoon and some kitchen film before you start. It will be better if you also keep a small hand towel ready before starting the process.

Process

Pour the warm water in a large mixing bowl, then add the sugar and dissolve it. Next, dissolve the yeast by stirring continuously after addition. Allow the mixture to settle down for 10 minutes or extra so that the yeast becomes active.

Now add the yeast and olive oil, when the appearance of the mixture becomes foamy and cloudy at the surface. Dissolve it continuous stirring. Then add 3 cups of flour to the mixture one-by-one and whisk in until dissolved completely. Make sure the mixture is completely smooth. Use your hands to combine the dough until all of the dry flour has moistened into a mass.

When the flour has absorbed all of the moisture and congealed into a firm mass, remove it from the bowl to a floured tabletop to knead it. Fold it in half again and push it into itself, again and again for perhaps 10 to 12 minutes or so, or about 200 cycles. It is very important that the dough is very well kneaded.

After kneading is complete, when dough transforms into a silky, smoothly-textured ball, coat the dough ball with a thin layer of olive oil. After that place it in the bottom of a large mixing bowl that has also been coated on the inside with olive oil.

Now comes the step on panning the prepared pizza dough. One of the most demanding of the pizza maker’s many challenges is getting the raw pizza dough ball into a pizza pan. The panning of pizza can be done by various methods as per your convenience. The popular methods are Pizza dough sheeting, pizza dough pressing, hand tossing pizza dough- do it only if you don’t get hazy when catching, hand pressing pizza dough, and last is pin rolling pizza dough.